King Frost parade draws thousands to Hamburg – Pottsville Republican Herald

HAMBURG — It didn’t talk long for 2-year-old Eloise Troutman to get into the swing of things Saturday evening at the 61st King Frost Parade.

At her first Halloween parade, dressed as a pepper shaker, Eloise scrambled for candy with kids twice her size at the corner of Third and Walnut streets.

Watching her daughter drop Hershey candy into a jack-o-lantern bucket brought back memories for Kelly Troutman.

“She’s doing what I did as a kid,” said Troutman, a Mohrsville dairy farmer.

Indeed, tradition lies at the heart of the festive event first held 115 years ago.

Among the throngs that lined the parade route, parents and grandparents reminisced about experiencing the parade when they were young.

“I used to come all the time when I was young,” said Karley Mull, a pizza shop manager in Lebanon County. “It’s nice that I can bring my kids to it.”

Scarlet, Mull’s 7-year-old, squeezed into a giant T-Rex costume and her older sister, Isabelle, came as SpongeBob SquarePants.

Jim and Tina Adam of Leesport had been coming to the parade for more than 50 years.

Actually, they recalled, it was even larger back in the day. There were more bands and the parade was longer.

“We wouldn’t get home until 1:30 in the morning,” Jim said. “When you came to the King Frost parade when I was a kid, you didn’t make it to church the next day.”

The parade is held on the last Saturday in October.

Viewed from front porches, and sidewalks were lined shoulder-to-shoulder with people, the parade lasted more than three hours. At times, the line of march encircled the town’s entire business district.

While many bundled in blankets, there was no sign of frost – except for the white-bearded Norseman whose very presence signaled the arrival of winter.

George Mitten made his 12th appearance as King Frost. He succeeded the late M. Domer Leibensperger, a Hamburg funeral director, who held the position for 32 years.

Derek Leibensperger, Domer’s son, and Ryan and Colleen Witman, head a group of volunteers that organized the parade.

History

The roots of the parade go back to 1910, when Jack Walker came up with the idea for a King Frost Carnival.

It caught on, and people came from all over to see the Hamburg Halloween spectacle.

Floats were horse-drawn and the parade route was lit by torches. The Hamburg Item estimated early crowds at 15,000.

In 1916, the Item announced there would be no parade due to the threat of the U.S. entering World War I, a polio epidemic and the State Street bridge over the Schuylkill Canal being rebuilt.

King Frost was back with a queen, princesses and a beauty pageant in 1924, when Elda Dietrich was crowned queen and a crowd of 50,000 lined the streets.

That year, entries included a Pennsylvania Railroad float that had taken first prize at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City.

The parade lapsed again, but returned in the midst of the Great Depression. Bands from Reading, Pottsville and Kutztown were in the 17-block line of march, an outpouring of optimism amid dark times.

King Frost was doomed once again in the 1940s, primarily due to highway traffic on the parade route and the advent of World War II.

The Hamburg Jaycees came to the rescue, reviving the old tradition once more in 1964. It has been held ever since, except during the Covid pandemic in 2020.

The Spectacle

At the corner of Third and Walnut, the event took on the feeling of the Schuylkill County Fair.

The scent of hot sausage sandwiches and funnel cakes wafted over the crowd. Long lines formed at the food stands, whose flashing lights cast an eerie red glow over the passing parade.

Street vendors were encircled by kids purchasing light sabres, noise makers and trendy Labubu dolls.

Mack trucks and pickups toted youth sports teams tossing candy to eager youngsters sitting curbside.

The Shriners fielded what amounted to a division in the parade, with a string band, a hospital exhibit and Fez-clad old guys zig-zagging down the streets in gas-powered minicars.

Flaming baton twirlers, Jeeps with creepy yellow eyes glaring from their windshields and marching bands from Hamburg, Schuylkill Valley, Northwestern Lehigh, Allentown and Parkland added to the Halloween spectacle.

Sitting curbside, longtime King Frost parade veteran Dominic Dilillo reveled in the celebratory atmosphere.

“I just love seeing the smiles on the kid’s faces,” he said. “They’re having so much fun.”